It was as if the fever that had built through the five seasons finally broke in this episode, Ozymandias, but for the worse. There was death and dissolution, and for those who lived their world was shattered.

Shock ... Walt is still in cuffs as he breaks down over the killing someone dear to him on Breaking Bad.

And it was almost perfectly executed. The heartbreaking economy and thematic weight of this episode makes clear that Breaking Bad, which now has two episodes to run, is moving towards the finale with purposeful intent.

Corners are not being cut, as with Lost. Creator and executive producer Vince Gilligan knows exactly what must transpire. He's not going to blink.

Related Content

The opening took us to the same spot where last week's episode cut to black, mid-shootout, but it was approximately 18 months prior, when Walt and Jesse went there to cook for the first time. Walt had the Ned Flanders haircut and the tighty-whiteys on, an innocent just beginning to allow his buried darkness — the personality that would become known as Heisenberg — to glimpse the outside world.

"The reaction has begun," he tells a less-than-impressed Jesse, before walking away to practice a deception on the phone with a pregnant Skyler as to why he'll be late home. She buys it, as she would many times until this episode, and they even bat back and forth possible baby names.

Advertisement

This is a moment of creation, ripe with possibility: Skyler is carrying the baby girl they will name Holly, Walter is beginning his meth manufacturing empire.

Cut to now and everything is ending. Steve Gomez is dead and Hank has a gunshot wound to the thigh. With Jack and his white supremacist gang standing over him, Hank can see what Walt can't. Still handcuffed, Walt begs for Hank's life, invoking family, trying to coerce Hank into walking away and eventually offering up the buried barrels of money, all $80 million of it.

Hank doesn't bite. He asserts his job, his rank, his defiance, and pityingly tells Walt what should be obvious. "He made up his mind 10 minutes ago," Hank says of Jack. His instructions to his executioner are succinct but cut short by a single shot. "Do what you…" he begins and that is the end of ASAC Hank Schrader, a character whose transformation isn't as great as those experienced by his brother-in-law Walt, but who has distinguished himself in ways his jolly, crude outline never initially suggested.

If Walt is genuinely despairing at Hank's death, it doesn't make him forgiving towards Jesse. After Jack gives back Walt one of his barrels to keep thing square between them (a lazy $11 million), Walt reminds the supremacist that he is still required to kill Jesse Pinkman, and then for good measure points out where Jesse is hiding.

Walt gives Jack the final nod to execute his former protégé, but the monstrously polite Todd suggests an interrogation at the Albuquerque Reichstag is in order first.

Whatever he did to you can be undone.

Walt acquiesces but he gets a nightmarish blow in first; telling Jessie: "I watched Jane die… I could have saved her, but I didn't." Did that hurt Jesse more than Todd's subsequent torture, which left a battered Jesse cowering in a concrete pit before he was literally chained up in Jack and Todd's meth lab? A surveillance snap of Andrea and Brock makes it clear that he still has something valuable to safeguard.

When Hank dies Walt drops to the ground in grief, his head in the red desert dirt, his mouth like some black void, suggesting that this is where his soul had once lodged.

It is one of several telling shots from director Rian Johnson — the filmmaker behind last year's sci-fi success Looper, who has previously helmed epsiodes Fly in Season Three, and Fifty-One from the first half of this season. Another is the perfectly framing the adversarial nature of sisters Skyler and Marie as they sit opposite each other.

The latter, alerted by Hank's congratulatory but premature news of Walt's apprehension, descends on the car wash to confront her sibling and begin the cleansing. Marie has a fanatic's zeal — note the hint of her signature colour, purple, in the floral arrangement dividing the two women — and she drops the hammer on Skyler, telling her Walt is being booked and that her repentance has to begin with Junior being told the truth.

"You're completely out of your mind," replies an angry Junior, the person who more than any other Walt has tried to insulate from his machinations. Skyler is in tears and Marie is trying to be supportive and not gloat.

But everything spirals when the Whites drive home to find Walt; who is furiously packing suitcases after having rolled his money barrel across most of the desert.

There are many different sides of Walt in this episode: devastated by Hank's loss, merciless with Jesse, focused when the money has to be safeguarded. By the time his family gets home, he is panicking, maniacally ordering his wife and son to pack, and prevaricating as they asked for explanations.

"You killed him, you killed Hank," Skyler declares and, perhaps because Marie has broken Walt's hold on her with the news of his arrest, she refuses go along with Walt again, despite his exhortations that there is $11 million waiting outside to take them to a new life.

Skyler walks into the kitchen and faces a decision; take a knife out of its block, or pick up the phone — the same one Walt called her on at the episode's start.

She chooses the former, ushering Junior behind her and then ordering Walt out. When he advances she slashes at his hand, drawing blood, and they wrestle. Johnson directs these scenes with vivid clarity, putting the four hands desperately wrapping around the bloody blade's handle perfectly in the foreground of one shot.

Junior pulls his father off his mother and then doesn't hesitate to call 911. "We're family," Walt splutters, but the White clan is no more.

Junior, in his own way, has been as decisive as his father. Perhaps Walter has tried to keep the truth from his son not only because Junior is an innocent, but because Walt knows his son is a good person and will never tolerate his secret life.

That is the point where Walt cut his losses, walking out the door and scooping up baby Holly as he goes. Skyler chases after him screaming — she calls Holly "Buttercup" — but Walt drives off. All that murderous effort and moral expenditure to safeguard his family, and in the end he is the one who walks away.

When he eventually calls back, he gives a great performance. Walter rants and raves, blaming Skyler for her "insubordination" and doing a fine impersonation of a bullying monster. He is angry, but he is also exonerating his wife. Walt pretends to believe that the police aren't listening, but he is speaking to them as much as he is Skyler.

Holly has already given him a demand for “mama, mama”, and Walt is making sure that when he returns his daughter, her mother will be free to care for her. "You cross me, there will be consequences," he swears, and Skyler's quietly acknowledges his act with, "I'm sorry". Is this his way of saying sorry, or does he just need to set the scene for returning Holly so he can run unencumbered?

Walt is in tears as he destroys his phone, but the next morning he doesn't look back as enters the infamous maroon people-mover, which we still believe belongs to Saul's identity broker.

ALSO:

— "You could have any future you want." Walt tries to convince Jack to take the cash and spare Hank. It's a trademark lie on this show; that the means will create a new end. The truth, as Breaking Bad has shown, is the opposite. What you're trying to avoid will eventually triumph.

— "You're never going to see Hank again." Walt may have been playing a role for Skyler, but he crushes an already terrified Marie when his threats confirm Hank's death.

— Keep an eye on the little girl (or twins, as is often the case) playing Holly. That was a pretty solid performance for an actor not yet two years old.

Two episodes to go — Where to now? I think there will be a leap now, and that the final two episodes will pick up with the flash-forward that these final eight episodes began with, as Walt returns to the trashed family home to add the Ricin to the machine-gun in his car boot. Jesse will survive, courtesy of his meth cooking skills, but he's up against it with Todd, who is a sociopath with good manners. And there's also the confession Jesse taped for Hank.

What do you think? Anyone still seeing a future for Walt? How will Marie react? Did you miss Saul?